6 Reasons It's Actually Fun Watching 'We Were Liars' And Knowing That Huge Twist
Spoilers below for the final episode and twist of 'We Were Liars'.
It's a rollercoaster if you've adored a book and hear it's getting made into a TV show. There's the initial excitement. Who will play your favourite character? Will the world look like the one you've built in your mind? Everyone else is going to discover how amazing it is. And many fans of E. Lockhart's book, We Were Liars will have been excited by the release of Prime Video's adaptation, which began streaming this week.
But there are drawbacks too - there's room for disappointment of course, but there's also the fact that you know how it ends. While loads of people find huge joy and comfort in repeat watches, maybe I'm just too plot driven because for me, already knowing how the story plays out isn't a draw, and in fact, it's a turn off.
And in the case of a story like We Were Liars the risk of being turned off by this knowledge is even greater, because the whole story hinges on a huge twist - that while Candence Sinclair is trying to puzzle through what happened to her last summer, her friends, The Liars, are actually now ghosts, having died in the fire that also caused her injury.
Author E. Lockhart is part of the writing team who created the show and says she has high hopes people will still love the show's ending. 'During the pandemic, people started making TikTok videos about the novel, holding the book with tears running down their face,' she said. 'This show is going to do that, turned up to 11.'
But it's not just fans of the book who may have discovered the ending - the internet is a terrible spoilery place and some of us are just too tempted to wait for eight hours of television to play out.
No mattter how you came to know what happens at the end of We Were Liars, I'm here to reassure you that you can still enjoy the eight-episode show. Here's why.
Throughout Summer 17, The Liars get to be with Cadence all summer and somehow avoid a million moments where people say 'Er, Cadence, who are you talking to?' Knowing throughout the series that The Liars are ghosts in Summer 17 you get to really enjoy the subtle ways it's written into the plot. For instance, in the moment when Johnny's mother Carrie finds Cadence with his phone and she ignores his pleas to give the phone back. Or when Mirren's little sister laughs when Cadence suggests Mirren tell her a ghost story. Yes the moments are played back 'realisation style' at the end, but it's quietly satisfying watching them play out without Cadence realising what's going on.
Well, obviously. But there are many moments when those who don't know the big plot twist will be shouting at their TVs 'But why won't you just tell her what happened?' and 'Why are you all going along with this?' The cover, that Cadence must learn for herself because otherwise she gets headaches and blacks out, starts to wear frustratingly thin six episodes in. Watching while understanding what's going on is a much less stressful experience.
Sometimes you just need a little bittersweet in your life. True fans of the book fell for the great bond between The Liars and especially, Cadence and Gat. Watching their interactions before and after the fire knowing what's really going on adds a bittersweet layer to watching the story play out that you might've skimmed over in the book in your rush to find out what on earth was going on.
As Cadence notes in the final episode - without fully understanding - in Summer 17 the Sinclair sisters - for my money, the best bit of the show, and one expanded out from the book - aren't fighting anymore. The levels to which the sisters will go to hurt each other when a verbal fight breaks out is unmatched. And to see the change - and truly understand it, makes a real difference to the depth of the show, and the clever plotting.
Compared to some shows, the changes between the book and the TV series when it comes to We Were Liars are small and delicately done, but they are there. Particularly when it comes to the deeper exploration of Gat's background and his misgivings about Harris Sinclair and the family's treatment of their staff on the island.
When Cadence first meets Gat, she asks him, 'Are you real?' For those of us who know how the relationship between the two plays out, it's a great and touching moment. And when Ed says in episode seven that The Liars have their whole lives ahead of them? Pure heartbreak.
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